Sunset at the Harbor

From Aegina to Skiathos, this is a beautiful and famous island which is located in the archipelago of the Cyclades. Much of Skiathos island fame is the fact that it was the main location of the famous musical “Mamma Mia”, where exactly here were filmed most scenes of the movie. This is the port of the city island taken over by a small hill in front of

I take several shots on this hill since they had a favorable position towards the sunset and the city harbor. I made a small stack of photographs to take as many as possible in the frame rocks and make the image more depth

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I start as usual using Luminosity Masks to blend all the bracketed exposures taken in the port of Skiathos. When I got a final image I combined this with the image I had taken further down with rocks to merge them together to get such a small vertorama. With the resulting “basic” image of I started to change the lights, shadows, highlights the Curves tool inside Camera Raw

Using LAB Color I pushed up vibrance and yellows color, then I applied Dodge and Burn tool on the rocks to make them brighter. I increased details in the whole frame, then, with a small gaussian blur, I removed a small noise in the water. For this I applied gaussian blur with a black layer mask (hidden), with a white brush I painted all the water to smooth it. Finally I increased the contrast using curves tool and created a slight vignetting to give more prominence to the central area

After days spent in Athens I moved on a island that is located in front of Athens… the island of Aegina. Is a peaceful island away from mass tourism, where there are mainly locals and Athenians who come to spend their holidays on an island easily accessible. When I took this picture I was in the island’s capital “Egina” which of course is the reference center of the whole area. I found this micro beach on the road leading out of the center of Aegina on which there was this small dock on the sea.

I take some shots using bracketing over the area to have good exposure for the sky and clouds and I shot a exposure to get a strong focus on the foregroud. With the passing of time that carried on the increasingly light toward the blue hour, I started doing more and more tests with exposure compensation up to that have not come into a state of low light. I set a value of -5 exposure compensation on my D800 with a 20-second exposure time, I managed to get good results (I know I have to decide to buy photo filters) 🙂

WORKFLOW EXPLANATION

I start my edit with the sky, using the Luminosity Masks it was very easy to bring down the exposure of the sky without affecting the entire image. Then was the turn of a Dodge and Burn intervention to clean water from reflections and to brighten other part of the frame too darks. With the help of Color Lookup adjustment layer I added two effect to the frame, I am talking about Foggy Night and Drop Blues using a lower opacity 15-20% to give a small surreal effect to the frame. Using this technique I give more impact to the sunset light on the edge. As a final step I increased the details on the entire imag and contrasts, again making use of Luminosity Masks combined with the curves tool. For the last touch I use Color Efex pro filter to add a small vignette using Darken Lighten Center filter.

Dubrovnik taken from the top of the walls that characterize it. Dubrovnik is a beautiful Croatian town of great beauty Unesco Heritage , a place that for a very long time I want to visit and photograph. The pictures I ‘ve taken is at the top of steps of the walls entrace , these are the main attraction of the city and walk around the perimeter of Dubrovnik leaving you the chance to admire the beauty of the buildings and the cliffs on the sea.

During my stay in Dubrovnik I have been very unlucky with the weather having often found clouds and pouring rain. In fact I went to visit the walls of Dubrovnik in one of the rare non-rainy afternoons of my weekend. Also as it is seen from the threatening clouds 🙂

I made five exposures for this photo but in fact I have used only three that I worked using Luminance Masks, I have not done a lot of color work for my coverage of this picture was very limited but I dwelt a lot of shadows and contrasts to give a slightly surreal look to the image

It follows the serie of photos taken in Amalfi during my stay in the beautiful Amalfi Coast . This is a landscape of the top watching Amalfi touched by the setting sun. To Give Some landmark is simply treats the other side from my latest post. As in the previous photo I take a series of exposures before coming down to Amalfi town when the sunset ends

In September I started exploring some areas looking for a place to photograph the Milky Way, since I had time until October to see it. So I start explore the area of Gran Sasso – Abruzzo an afternoon in late September located in Campo Imperatore where is an astronomical observatory. In the plain of Campo Imperatore it’s possible to admire a beautiful view of the mountains, the other ( behind my shot ) is located the astronomical observatory and the Hotel Campo Imperatore, red coloured to be visible during the harsh winters of snow. During my tour, I scoured log cabins that serve the explorers to shelter from the cold during the crossings and this is one of those, A peaceful, greeny mountain landscape, il the result.

I shot 5 exposures for this picture, but I’ve only used 3, starting from the darker one. Indeed the light was still too high and usually shooting always times close at dusk, so I started using the underexposed image using the others to bring up on light and detail. In this image I used the color lookup function to give greater emphasis to the greens and shades of sky.

This is from the headland next to the monastery of Varlaam, from this summit you can admire one of the most beautiful landscapes of Meteora. On the right there is the Great Meteorthelargest monasteryofmeteors. I reached this place during the early sunset, I was lucky with the timing. I made this picutre from 3 exposures, I created manually by editing in a blending with the luminance masks and function Camera Raw Photoshop CC

I took this picture while I was on the promontory overlooking the meteors. What you see in the background is the town Kalambaka located at the foot of the beautiful monasteries. In the image on the left is the impressive monastery of Agia Triada, the most difficult to achieve, personally I climbed up to the top starting from Kalambaka and I assure you that it was hard 😀

The photo was taken on the road that connects all the meteors on top with each other, the image is the result of a single shot that I edited completely using Camera Raw. I stepped up the reflection of light to give more depth to the image that looked too flat before. For the rest it was all a work of contrasts, lights and shadows using layer masks.

Hello to all guys I’m back from my trip in Greece that I posted in my previous post. I visited so many beautiful places and start from the very beginning of my trip. Meteora with the meteors are an amazing place, beautiful and full of magic with their aura of mysticism of the sanctuaries, to be meteors not only admire a beautiful landscape and an important UNESCO heritage site but also a place that makes you think, a magical and enchanting . There are 6 monasteries around, Agios Nikolaos, Agios Stefanos Aghia Triada, Great Meteoron, Roussanou and Varlaam. I visited all of them but I am not going boring you to tell you about each one but the panorama you see in this picture is taken from Roussanou, my favorite, small and middle where you can admire the most beautiful view of Meteora, this is just a taste will be followed by many others 🙂

TECHNICAL STUFF

I had 5 shots and I merged with the function automate Photoshop, it is time that I do not use this technique to create the HDR but this time it seemed necessary caused by the glow behind the mountains of Meteora. I created many shadows in the foreground area, while having the function of my Nikon D-Lighting at most, I had to lighten considerably shadows with Camera Raw.

Cilento is a beautiful place in the south of Salerno, every year, during the summer holidays, I decided to spend a few days around here to visit some my parents, and to take some pictures. The view of the mountains to the sea is the feature of this place, this is among one of the most famous Cilento’s location to take panoramas landscape. To make this picture, I went in a place not far from the house of my parents called Villammare. Before entering the village there is a small street where you can admire the landscape in all its splendor and a little later, the stairs that lead down to the beach, where at a certain hour of sunset is no longer anyone, only some fishermans. This was taken from the steps taking all exposures by hand (there was no room on the stairs to keep the tripod) 😀

The Bohinj Lake at sunset, just a wonderful view of a beautiful lake which I hope soon to see again. I think I have said enough in my previous post with a lot of shipping on the beauty of this place. 🙂 To take this shot i put mytripod in the water but near the shore. When i shot this image the sun had just crossed the mountains, so when I edited this picture I used luminance masks to lighten the ducks and the lower part of the image that was quite dark in spite of the HDR

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Hi, my name is Giuseppe Sapori, a professional photographer and author of this website, created by yours truly to show my work and share with you the techniques I use. My expertise is in the field of Landscape Photography... (Read More)